The new ‘F’ word

Move over ABCD, F is here. After Stunning Sunday, historical dates will no longer be divided into ‘BC’ and ‘AD’. Now that we have achieved the unthinkable and pulled a Playboy Bunny out of our much-stained topi, every event will be classified as ‘Before F1′ or ‘After F1′.

All that happened in our recently shaming past will be consigned to ‘BF1′, and everything that follows the pattern of India’s searing entry into the Grand Prix stratosphere will be hailed as ‘AF1′. In that sense ‘F’ has overtaken ‘G’ — as in CWG, 2G and all the ‘ji’s’ effed by these scams.

Yesss! The globally hurrahed weekend at the ‘awhsum’ Buddh Inter-national Circuit (BIC) is a turning point. Even the likes of me, who can’t tell a Massa from a massacre, caught the F1 fever that spread faster than dengue, permeated the air like post-Diwali pollution, and unleashed babbling delirium. So, in the next couple of weeks, it is more than likely that behaviour and patterns will get changed quicker than a tyre at a pit stop.

Here’s a forecast.

Now that Maya Memsaheb has become the toast of the Other Backless Classes along with her usual OBCs, she could transform faster than Vettel’s record 1min 27.25 on Lap 60 last Sunday. ‘Budday’ diamonds will no longer be our Ganj Girl’s best friend, and her recent upmanship would make Rs five-crore currency-note garlands too downmarket.

Instead, next January, Mayawati will demand the same type of F1 cake, signed by GP drivers and JP board members, and hers would have to be 40 ft long, not merely four. She might also appear sporting a BSP-blue chignon a la Lady Gaga’s tiranga top-knot.

For such image-building services the Jaypee Sports International MD might get a statue alongside Maya-ji’s own at the Rs 685-crore Dalit Prerna Sthal in Noida. He too should be portrayed carrying a large handbag.

After the BIC vroomed its way into our collective consciousness with speed and sound, ‘Buddh’ will symbolise the exact opposite of peace and tranquillity. Gautama’s eightfold path to bliss will be officially replaced by the eight-lane Delhi-Agra highway.

Stray dogs will be asked to inaugurate all major projects. Future success guaranteed; also more entertaining.

The ‘Look Maya, No Potholes’ Yamuna Expressway may not pave the way for other national highways. But city streets will continue to witness the nerve-wracking manoeuvres we saw at the circuit last weekend — exiting lanes, late braking, taking lethal corners. Only now our road ragers can legitimately adopt the belligerence of F1 racers.

‘Traffic’ is an equal impediment for both, but Vithal-Vittel will boast in salivating detail how ‘my Skoda took the sausage curb at Turn 8 of Crawl Bagh, finally overtaking that saala i10. It wasn’t even an i20, yaar!’ He will mark this trite triumph with Sebastian Vettel’s raised-fist ‘woohoo pump’.

Since cars are supposedly nothing more than phallic symbols, the most colourful After F1 change could be in the language of the libido. Our Bed Bulls will switch to F1-speak while boasting about their after-party exploits: ‘My grip level was very good…particularly where downforce works really hard for me. It’s not so easy to bring her tyres up to temperature, but once you’ve got them there, the grip becomes phenomenal, and then the lap becomes really fast and flowing.’

Or our desi alpha Romeos could quote Michael Schumacher himself: ‘The track will get better once it has bedded in’. F1, F-word, both work on the same formula.

DISCLAIMER : Views expressed above are the author's own.

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Bachi Karkaria's Erratica and its cheeky sign-off character, Alec Smart, have had a growing league of followers since 1994 when the column began in the Metropolis on Saturday. It now appears on the Edit Page of the Times of India, every Thursday. It takes a sly dig at whatever has inflated political/celebrity egos, and got public knickers in a twist that week. It makes you chuckle, think and marvel at the elasticity of the English language. Bachi Karkaria also writes Giving Gyan in the Mumbai Mirror, and its fellow publications in other cities. It is a shooting-from-the-lip advice column to the lovelorn and otherwise torn, telling them to stop cribbing and start living -- all in her her branded pithy, witty style.

Bachi Karkaria's Erratica and its cheeky sign-off character, Alec Smart, have had a growing league of followers since 1994 when the column began in the Metr. . .